Worth & Winterhalter: the Mid-19th Century’s Masters of Design & Draughtsmanship

Wednesday 1 October 2025 at 2.00 pm at the Lowther Pavilion. Guests may attend the lecture – £10 pp (pay on door)

Lecturer: Scott Schiavone

Scott William Schiavone is a Fashion Historian and Curator. Scott is both University of Glasgow and London College of Fashion alumni having graduated from the MA (Hons) History of Art and MA Fashion Curation in 2004 and 2010 respectively. He has worked with fashion and textile collections across the UK, including Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland and The Harris Museum in Preston where he is currently the Decorative Art Curator. Scott has his own YouTube channel, Fashion &… which now has over 6,000 subscribers. His areas of expertise are 19th  and 20th century French, British and American womenswear, luxury fashion accessories and marginalised social histories of fashion.

The Lecture:

German born artist Franz Xaver Winterhalter painted portraits of the rich, powerful and fashionable courts of 19th century Europe. English Couturier Charles Frederick Worth established his couture house in Paris in 1858 and soon became official couturier to the Empress Eugénie, consort of Napoleon III. Worth and Winterhalter may not have directly worked together, but they shared a client list that boasted the aristocracy and crowned heads of Europe during the mid-19th century. Whereas one man depicted the finest and most luxurious fabrics in paint, the other sculpted these fabrics into ethereal gowns for the fashionable elite. This lecture brings together an intoxicating blend of fashion and art, two disciplines that continuously overlap throughout our cultural and social history and explores the exceptional talents of two men whose design and draughtsmanship defined an era.

Caption: Barbe Dmitrievna Mergassov Madame Rimsky-Korsakov (1864), oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. Publc domain